


rings and rosies round

by impossibletruths



Series: the beautiful things the heavens carry [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Minor Character Death, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 19:23:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10315277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: Home isn’t what it was when they left. [part of the Critical Role Star Wars AU]





	

**Author's Note:**

> the twins in the early days. title from "we all fall down" by the rigs
> 
>   _just ashes on the ground_  
>  _rings and rosies round_  
>  _and we all fall down_

The blue-white lines of hyperspace snap back into stars as the _SSC Elincair_ enters orbit around Byroden, the green-and-russet planet front and center on the viewscreen and still small among the endless dark of space. Vex presses her lips together and watches Vax’s hands tighten around the controls. For a moment they hold there, caught at the very edges of the planet’s gravity well, watching it shift slowly, the burning immensity of the star of the Gladepool system creeping into view around the bulk of the planet. The light catches on the twin moons, and Vex thinks suddenly of Mother’s stories, _twin moons for my twins_ , and swallows around the lump in her throat. Something wells up within her, a tangled mess of longing-fear, and she takes a deep breath and curls her hands into fists at her side.

They are so close. They can’t well turn back now.

“Well?” she says as the blinding light of the star cuts through the cockpit, redder than she remembers. “Are you going to land or not?”

“Yeah, alright,” Vax grumbles. Vex hears the anxiety lacing his voice clear as day and presses her lips tighter around the thoughts she will not voice. “Hold on, I’m trying to set coordinates.”

The planet turns ponderously below them, as if held among the dark by an invisible string. She remembers pulling away from it years ago in this same ship, her momentary interest in the novelty of a real starship fizzling away as they left home and Mother and everything they knew behind on that green, hot world. And now here they are, years older, staring down at it again, the ponderous turn, the thick pattern of clouds, the blue of the oceans and narrow white caps of ice at the poles. Vex clenches her hands into fists in her lap.

“Right,” says Vax. “Coordinates locked. Ready, sister?”

“Of course,” Vex nods, fingers tightening until her knuckles go white. Vax smiles, tight around the eyes, and the nose of the ship dips towards the planet, engines humming as they cut through the resistance of the atmosphere.

Byroden is little more than a colony, one of a dozen in the Gladepool systems and those around it. The Verdant Expanse is hardly a populous sector––few people are willing to live along the edge of the Unknown Regions––but it’s small, out of the way. Full of hardy, good folk who work for their livelihoods, not posturing men and women who look down on the twins for being half-blooded, who call them unwanted. Fondness and nostalgia well up in Vex as they skim along the canopy of the southern forests towards town. It’s not the only settlement on the small planet, but it’s the only one with a spaceport, the only one to bear the same name as the planet.

More importantly, it’s home.

They move dawn-wards, into the rising sun, and the light that streams through the viewport is the reason they do not see it right away.

The town comes into view piecemeal, a blur of peramcrete buildings and dirt roads like so many Mid Rim colony worlds, and for a moment Vex does not understand why it seems smaller, why the back of her neck prickles. Perhaps, she thinks wildly, she has grown that much. But, no. The shadow of the ship falls over the settlement as they pass overhead, towards the landing pads beyond the town’s indistinct border, and she sees empty places where the general store used to be, and a block of dwellings crumbled upon itself, and the green ground withered brown. Worse yet, there is no movement below them, the streets still and empty. Worry spikes within her, a _wrong wrong wrong_ anxiety echo deep in her chest.

“Brother,” she says, voice tight. “Take us down.”

He does, sets them down short of the spaceport in a withered, dusty clearing at the outskirts of the town, and they trip over each other as they half-run out of the cockpit. Vex’s pulse thrums in her ears, the hot pounding of her heart blocking out everything, and the ramp descends and they spill out of the ship to be met with a ruined, broken settlement.

“Fuck,” Vax breathes at her side. “What happened?”

Vex cannot speak; her throat is too tight. The sun beats down, throws spots across her vision every time she blinks, but the crumbled ruin of Byroden does not disappear among the mirage. She takes a shaking step forward, and then another, and then she is running, feet pounding against the dusty ground and withered grass, broken buildings whisking past as her feet lead her unerringly to the place she most desperately wants to be.

Home.

She gets there before Vax, stumbles to a stop in front of a sun-scorched pile of rubble. The door still stands, the frame upright and empty and open to nothing, roof and walls long-since collapsed. Ash dusts everything, thick and grey against the pale permacrete. Stars above, what happened?

Vex walks forwards as if in a dream, passes through the front door as she has a hundred, a thousand times before. The back wall still stands, discolored by time and weather. She can see the foundation too, the outline of the kitchen, of her and Vax’s room, of Mother’s––

She closes her eyes against it all. Mother. Where is Mother, where is––

“Ah,” says a voice behind her, old and weathered, and she spins around, momentarily full of such foolish, overpowering _hope_ –– But it is an old woman, unfamiliar and heavy with sorrow. She looks at Vex with something that is not quite pity, one eye electric blue and the other clouded with age and blind. “I had wondered when you might come back.”

Vax stumbles up behind the old woman, face sickly pale, and Vex reaches out for him without words and he reaches back, tripping past the old woman to cling to Vex’s hand. He speaks for the both of them.

“What happened?” he asks, voice hollow. “What the fuck happened?”

“Fire came from the sky,” says the old woman. “Burned the town, and the land, killed it. Most left, after that. The ones who survived.”

“Why?” demands Vex. Her voice shakes; she tries again, biting the word out. “Why?”

“I don’t know, child. These are dangerous parts, too close to the unknown. Some violences are senseless.”

“Why did you stay?” asks Vax, untrusting. “Who are you?”

“An old woman, too tired to travel. A few of us have stayed. It’s no harder a life than that anywhere else among the colonies.”

“And the rest of the system?” Vex asks. The woman shakes her head, slow and heavy. “How long ago?”

“Years, child. Three, perhaps four. Long enough for us to know what cannot be recovered.”

Vex is afraid to ask. Vex has to ask. “And, our mother––“

The woman sinks in on herself. “I’m sorry,” she says, and Vex nods, closes her eyes against the tears and purses her lips as something inside her cracks and crumbles, falls apart like this their home.

“Thank you,” she manages, barely a whisper. “I think––“ Her voice cracks and she goes silent, but the woman seems to understand enough.

“If you need anything, I live further into town. I will be outside, should you have questions.”

“Thank you,” Vax replies for her, voice thick. The woman disappears into the dusty streets, leaves them along with the wreckage and the ruin. Vex sinks to her knees.

Vax kneels next to her, ash staining the fine fabric of their trousers, cut in the Syngorian style, and Vex hates them, hates the whole damn planet and its people for taking them away, for not telling them. _Years_ ago, and not a word from their darling father, not a whisper, nothing.

“Do you think he knew?” Vax asks quietly as Vex presses a hand across her mouth, as though she could hold her grief in. “D’you think he––“

“I don’t know,” says Vex, all fire and hurt. “I don’t know, and I don’t ever want to know. I don’t _ever_ want to go back there, Vax, I never want to see him again, I don’t want––“ She chokes on a sob, and feels her brother wrap his arms around her, tug her into him, and she goes willingly, leaning against him as much as he leans upon her.

“Alright,” he says, he promises. “Alright, we won’t. We’ll go far away. We’ll never go back there, or to him. We’ll go wherever we want, we’ll be whatever we want, we’ll–– It’s what Mother would want, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” says Vex, nods and swipes a hand across her damp cheeks. “Yeah, I think.”

For a long time they hold each other, among the ash and dust and scattered memories, and the hot sun beats down, creeps across the sky. Eventually, when Vex feels wrung out and dry and Vax’s breathing has steadied, they pick themselves up, carefully comb through the rubble and remains. Vex finds a childhood blanket, ruined and rotted from the weather. Vax finds some broken crockery: Mother’s cook pot, a few shattered plates, a caf mug sheltered by rock and only chipped at the rim, and he holds it tight.

By the time they finish, the sun is low on the horizon, and Vex feels heavy, like there is grit in her eyes and mouth and teeth and hair. They stand just outside their still-standing door, staring at the rubble and the upright far wall that marks the entirety of their mother’s inheritance.

“Onwards and upwards,” Vax murmurs. The twin moons are matching crescents in the northern sky. Vex presses a hand to the door frame and takes a deep breath.

Her brother presses a kiss to his thumb, and presses his thumb against sun-warmed permacrete. Vex takes his hand.

Together they turn away from home, and as one they return to their ship. They spend two hours poking around the internal wiring, recoding the transponder, cutting through the needless diplomatic safeguards. This isn’t an ambassador’s courier anymore.

“We should rename her,” Vax says late into the night, nursing wire burns on his fingertips, and Vex pauses, elbow-deep in the ship’s innards.

“To what?” she asks, but she has an idea. Her brother smiles, and it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but it’s a start.

“I was thinking… Maybe _Elaina_. She always said she wanted to see the stars.”

Vex swallows around the tightness of her throat.

“Yeah,” she says softly. “I think that’s a good name.”

The _BSC Elaina_ takes off in the small hours of the morning, peeling away from the dusty, cracked surface of Byroden and into high orbit, where the twin moons catch the rays of the sun and light up silver.

“Onwards and upwards,” Vex murmurs, hands on the controls, her brother at her side. He meets her eyes and nods.

The stars streak into blue-white lines as they make the jump to hyperspace and leave Byroden far, far behind.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Elincair_ means "star ship" in Elven. Elaina is, of course, the name of the twins' mother.
> 
> find me on tumblr at [teammompike](http://teammompike.tumblr.com)


End file.
